


Hey Sweetheart (or Meg and Jess Go On a Road Trip)

by sebfish



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F, F/M, Road Trips, demon coffeeshops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-27 21:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1723082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebfish/pseuds/sebfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica Moore first meets Meg the weekend her boyfriend’s away with his brother.</p>
<p>There’s a girl in her living room who she’s pretty sure she’s never met before.</p>
<p><i>Hey sweetheart</i>, she says, <i>I’ve been waiting to talk to you.</i></p>
<p>Her eyes turn impossibly black then, whites and iris both, and Jess thinks dimly <i>that’s not physically possible</i> and <i>we didn’t cover that in my anatomy class.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Hey Sweetheart (or Meg and Jess Go On a Road Trip)

**Author's Note:**

> So this just sort of happened because maidenpool on Tumblr was asking for crackships and I was like "Jess/Meg!" and then I started thinking about an AU where Meg was keeping an eye on Sam while he was at Stanford and realized that Jess was awesome and decided to drag her off instead of letting her die on the ceiling. And then somehow that turned into 3k of fic.

Jessica Moore first meets Meg the weekend her boyfriend’s away with his brother.

There’s a girl in her living room who she's pretty sure she's never met before.

_Hey sweetheart,_ she says,  _I’ve been waiting to talk to you._

Her eyes turn impossibly black then, whites and iris both, and Jess thinks dimly  _that’s not physically possible_ and  _we didn’t cover that in my anatomy class._

The girl is a demon, she explains, and there’s things happening that neither of them can stop. Sam Winchester is important and he needs a push, she says, and Jess was going to be that push.

_But I like you, luckily enough for you, and you could come with me instead,_ the demon says.

_Instead of what?_ Jess asks.

_Burning on the ceiling,_ the girl smirks,  _it’s a classic._

There’s a little more explanation, but the gist is that Jess’ choices are to pack now and leave or wait and (probably and/or definitely) die. She’s not sure she believes the girl, black eyes or not, but then Brady shows up and his eyes turn black too and she thinks  _oh_ and she really doesn’t want to die right now so she packs a bag while Brady and the girl are arguing about whether or not Jess should die.

The girl wins, apparently, since she’s waiting for Jess when she emerges from retrieving her toiletries.  _Only grab the most important stuff,_  she’d said,  _Sam can’t realize that you’re gone or it won’t work._

She follows the girl out, carefully not looking at Brady as she passes him.

The girl leads her out the back way across the street to where a car is waiting. Jess tosses her bag in the back seat and climbs into the passenger seat, and they wait.

Forty-five minutes later, there’s flames rushing out of her apartment window and the girl next to her has a grimly triumphant look on her face.

_Alright princess,_ she says.  _Show’s on._

 

 

 

The demon’s name is Meg, later, but for the first few months she changes names and bodies like clothes. It freaks Jess out, the first time she ditches and comes back in a different body (tall, blonde, and California tan) but she gets used to it. She learns to read the quirks and mannerisms that are purely Meg regardless of the body she’s in, the smirk of her mouth and tilt to her eyebrows that says that she isn’t afraid of the world.

The first night, though, she’s terrified because she’s in the car with a girl she doesn’t know who says she’s a demon like that’s something to be proud of and they’re speeding along to somewhere she doesn’t know.

The girl keeps driving through the night, tells Jess to sleep, but it takes a while for her to relax enough to do so. She’s never been good at sleeping in cars, not like Sam is. He’s never had any problem napping whenever they went on trips that took more than a few hours, just shrugged and said that his family moved around a lot when he was a kid.

_He thinks I’m dead,_ she thinks, but she just feels numb and scared and she can’t really think about what this means for Sam.

She drops off to sleep, finally, adrenaline crash leaving her wiped out.

Jess wakes up, disoriented, hours later. It’s light outside, bright enough that the sun’s been up for a few hours, and the girl is still driving. She has the brief panicked thought that Sam has his interview on Monday.

She goes back to sleep.

 

 

 

 

They stop finally in a small town in the middle of Oregon and the girl gets food and a hotel room for the both of them. She explains some things then, what demons are and what the Winchesters really do and hints that Sam’s important to the demons, even though she’s going to explain later, and Jess feels like she’s going to be sick.

They spend the next few days there, sleeping and watching TV and not doing much else. The girl explains things, small chunks at a time so Jess can process the information, but she’s smart and unfortunately everything the girl says makes a lot more sense than she’d like.

Jess cuts her hair and dyes it dark brown because she’s legally dead now and it’ll help keep her from being recognized. It’s a strange thought, being dead, but it fits her better than she thought it would.

There’s a lot of things about Sam that now make a lot more sense, knowing that there’s things that go bump in the night and he was raised the kind of person who goes after those things. (Like the salt that he bought in ten pound bags and stored in the hall closet, just in case, even though they lived in California and it never got icy or snowy. Or the scars he’s got that never quite matched up to the stories he told about them. She’s starting to think there’s a lot she doesn’t know about him.)

_We’ve got a story_ , Meg says while they’re sitting in the hotel room,  _about someone called the Boy King who would be born of humanity but would rise to lead Hell and redeem us._

Jess nods, listening.

_Sam Winchester is the Boy King._  Meg shrugs. _Or will be, someday, he’s not there yet. He’s kind of a half-grown puppy now, honestly. That’s why you’re important, though._

_You were supposed to die and start him on his hero’s journey, but I think you’re smart and more useful alive than just as a pretty dead princess._

Jess can’t really argue with that.

 

 

 

 

After a week they head out again and end up spending the first few months following Sam and Dean at a distance, always a few steps behind. Meg gradually explains what Sam is going to be and what her role will be (she’ll be the Boy King’s link to humanity, his second). At first, Jess thinks about running away, contacting Sam and Dean somehow, but the more she sees of this new world he's in the less inclined she is to run. Demons could find her anywhere and she's a loose end that most would be inclined to sever.

Meg seems to be the only one who finds her useful. Meg teaches her how to fight, how to break into a locked building and slip out without being noticed, how to move through the world without being noticed. Meg's a survivor and that's what she teaches Jess, along with stories and demon lore and other snippets about Hell.

Meg finds a body that fits, finally, in Massachusetts, a short slim blonde college student named Meg Masters.  _I like her_ , she says,  _I think I’ll keep her_. She goes by Meg, after that, and it’s hard to remember that she was anything else.

Jess meets Azazel and he looks her over before giving his nod of approval.  _You're something else_ , he says, and she flushes with pride. 

Meg starts bringing her along on the odd jobs she does for Azazel after that; Jess feels like she's graduated.

 

 

 

 

(Some days she doesn't feel like Jessica Moore at all, any more. Jessica Moore was a college girl from California with wealthy parents and a hardworking boyfriend who would've become a lawyer in a few years. They would've bought a cute little three-bedroom house and had two children and she would've split her time between working as a nurse and being a perfect PTA mom and wife.

She's just Jess, now. Jess lives on the road with a demon and has a boyfriend who thinks she's dead and is probably the antichrist. Jess can fight with guns and knives, even though she prefers knives in hand-to-hand combat, and can recite the first twenty-one of Hell's Precepts word for word (she's still working on the others). 

It’s only been a matter of months since she started this life on the road, but it feels like it’s been years.

Sometimes when they're on the road and she's laughing at a story Meg's telling about seducing a prioress in the fifteenth century she's pretty sure that she knows which life she prefers and it's not the one she would've ever expected.)

 

 

 

 

Meg runs into Sam while Jess is off checking in on one of Azazel's contacts. Jess is a little disappointed that she didn't get to see him herself, but there's bigger things going on and she'll see him soon enough anyway.

(It was worse in the first few months, when she missed him like breathing but knew it was worse for him, since he thought she was dead. Meg tells her it’s better, this way, but some days it’s hard to believe that, even though she’s glad to not be dead.)

A while later they hole up in Chicago while Meg checks on the Winchesters and Jess takes a few days to unwind and enjoy the city. She's anonymous here, more so than usual, false identification in her pockets because she's legally dead, moving through a city where nobody would remember her anyway. She goes shopping, picks up a few new pieces of clothing, decides to get her hair cut and recolored (medium brown this time, close to her natural color). 

Meg comes back eventually and she's pissed because the Winchesters broke her meatsuit, but Jess just laughs and tells her to get a new one if it bothers her that much.

 

 

 

 

Azazel’s heard a rumor that the Winchesters have found the Colt and since that’s all kinds of not good Meg goes off to try to get it from them. Jess chafes at being left behind but understands the necessity; there’ll be a time for her to meet Sam again, but not yet. Sam doesn’t know what his role is going to be yet, even though Meg and Jess both think it’d be better if he knew, and there’s too much risk that he’d drop out of hunting if he knew that she was still alive.

He doesn’t understand yet, doesn’t know, but she’ll be there to teach him when it’s time.

Meg doesn’t show up when they’d planned; Jess gives her another twenty-four hours before calling her cell phone. But Dean Winchester answers the phone, saying  _hello?_ instead of Meg’s usual  _hey sweetheart_  and she ends the call and fights the panic bubbling up in her throat.

It could be nothing; Meg had meant to get the Colt from the Winchesters and it’s entirely likely that they’d somehow ended up with her phone (except that Meg would’ve contacted her if that was the case to let her know, Meg’s always been good at letting her know as soon as possible).

She ditches her phone in a dumpster, wipes the memory and takes the simcard out and smashes it. She doesn’t think any of the Winchesters are savvy enough to track her phone, but she doesn’t want to take any chances. Jess hotwires a non-descript tan car from the parking lot, drives five hours without stopping until she’s several states away, then ditches the car and hops on a bus.

She finds a group of demons that Meg knows in a small town in Missouri. They’ve been managing a coffee shop for the past few years and don’t know any more than she does, but they offer her a place to stay and a job at the coffee shop for as long as she wants. There’s a few demons around the country that Meg told her were trustworthy and who knew about Jess, but Meg had told her that in case she ever needed to go to ground, these demons were more trustworthy than most and less likely to dislike her for being human.

Jess accepts, figuring that at least she’ll be safe here until Meg finds her. The demons are fairly old and powerful, old enough that they’re content to stay here for now because they’re tired of Hell’s politics and bored with causing widespread mayhem and destruction and are content to manage the shop and occasionally cause low-level mischief at the competing Starbucks across town.

(Emma is the manager wearing a tall woman with dark skin and pink hair and a kinder smile than Jess would’ve expected from a demon. She helps Jess make a call downstairs because Jess can provide the blood for a call but only demons can use Hell’s phone system; Jess almost cries with relief when Azazel picks up the line and informs her that she’s made the right decision and should stay put since Meg’s currently occupied in Hell and it’ll probably be a while until she’s back. He promises to check in on her the next time and tells Emma to keep an eye on her.)

 

 

 

 

It’s not bad, working at the coffee shop, even though it’s a lot less exciting than the past year has been. The demons get her a new identity and a space in the house that they share. She’s got two roommates but they respect the fact that she’s human and sometimes needs space, and it’s almost like being in college again. They don’t charge her rent so she keeps everything she makes and it’s kind of nice to have money that’s all hers.

Azazel visits, as promised, but doesn’t offer any information about Meg, just tells her to stay put.

A demon passes through a few months later and lets her know that John Winchester is dead and Sam and Dean are back on the road, but there’s not really any other news she’s interested in. Her first thought isn’t  _that was Sam’s dad_ , it’s relief that he’s not around to cause trouble because he knew more than either of his sons and had the most potential to fuck things up. She’s never been terribly sympathetic about him anyway; Sam didn’t talk about his childhood much and there were too many spaces where his father should’ve been and even if she knows now that he was probably raising them in the hunting life, she can’t really forgive him for how Sam grew up.

Six months later Jess finds out afterward that Meg made her way out only to get sent back to Hell again and feels unaccountably disappointed. Greg is a demon who’s working the shift with her when she finds out; he tries to cheer her up by telling stories of all the times he’s been sent downstairs. From what she’s heard she knows that demons have to scrape themselves out of Hell through their own will, if they get out at all, and any who get sent back aren’t generally shown pity.

Meg will get out because she’s done it hundreds of times, but she’ll be the one who pulls herself out.

It’s not a bad way to live, all in all, though Jess wishes Meg would come back sooner rather than later.

 

 

 

 

A year passes and she’s pretty sure she’s used to this new life. Missouri is different from California, cooler and greener and wetter for the most part. She makes a few friends who aren’t demons and becomes good friends with the demons at the coffee shop. There’s always a steady stream of college students in the coffee shop due to the community college nearby and there’s plenty of work to do.

The thick rich smell of coffee beans permeates her life, and it’s good. She worked as a barista back at Stanford so it’s easy, familiar work, making coffee and putting together drinks and serving pastries and sandwiches.

Outside of work Emma’s been making sure she kept up on her training since she’s been there; Jess’ been learning basic spell work as well for the past few months and making good progress.

It’s a nice bubble of peace, even if things aren’t so calm elsewhere. Azazel’s been dead for months, Sam died but was brought back by his brother, and demons are out in unprecedented numbers.

One of Jess’ roommates, Allie (who was once Belial before she said fuck it and jetted off to earth a few centuries ago and is now slightly less imposing in a slight curvy redhead) tells her that it’s all idiot new demons and that she shouldn’t worry because the fact that they’re being noticed by hunters means they’ll be gone soon enough. She gives Jess a charm against possession, just in case, and Jess makes sure to keep it on her at all times.

_Meg likes you, sweetie_ , she says,  _and that’s good enough that any demon worth his salt will respect that, but these demons are all fresh off the racks and all they’ll see is a pretty meatsuit._

So far as she knows, though, there haven’t been any unfriendly demons passing through. Jess wonders, sometimes, if there isn’t more she should be doing, but Greg just bumps her shoulder with his own when she asks and says that it’s enough that she’s there with them, that she’s safe, and she supposes that it’s enough.

 

 

 

 

Another year passes and she’s part of the community, knows by name all the little old ladies who stop in for coffee and muffins. She’s got a routine, works Sunday through Wednesday, spends Thursdays with an older woman named Angie who’s a nearby witch and is training her in spell work, spends her Fridays and Saturdays relaxing and working on other hobbies.

She learned how to knit, last winter, and made scarves with protection charms woven in with the yarn and gave them to anyone who wanted them. Angie had scrutinized hers thoroughly and pronounced it good work and offered her a rare smile.

There’s a guy who lives nearby and owns the local bookstore. His name is Thomas and he’s nice enough, tan skin and curly brown hair and a bright honest smile. Jess thinks she could’ve dated him, in another life, but she’s not sure she could now. Allie tells her she’s being silly, that Sam’s probably not waiting on her and there’s no reason for her to not have a little fun in the interim, but.

She likes him enough, but he’s not Sam. She thinks about saying  _sorry, I can’t, I’ve got a sort-of boyfriend already even though I haven’t seen him in years and he’s the antichrist and he thinks I’m dead_ but she’s not sure that would go down well. She thinks about Meg’s sly smiles and jokes and thinks, maybe, if it was Meg. Maybe Meg, but barring that, nobody else.

He asks her out, finally, while the air is turning crisp and there’s bright leaves in a splash of color she never saw out West, and she thinks about it, for a split second, but gives him a sad smile and a no. He accepts with grace and smiles back and says he’ll see her around.

_You’re missing someone,_ he says, the next time she sees him. She shrugs, says  _yeah, lost contact with someone a few years ago._

_I’m sure she’ll turn up,_ he says, and she’s surprised but doesn’t bother to correct him.

 

 

 

 

She’s wiping down tables in the mid-afternoon lull when the door opens and a short brunette with a pale, pretty face and a smirk she’d recognize on any face walks up to her.

“Hey sweetheart,” she says, “you ready to blow this popsicle stand?”

 “Hey Meg,” Jess says as she unties her apron. “Yeah, I’m ready to go.”

She distantly hears Allie’s shout of welcome as she steps into the back area of the shop to hang up her apron and curves up her lips in a smile.

They’ve got work to do and a Boy King to find and Meg’s going to have a lot of explaining to do, later. She’s going to miss the coffee shop and Angie and Thomas and Allie, but she’s missed Meg more, the past few years, even though she’s been here longer than she’d been on the run with Meg. It’s been fun here, but yeah, she’s ready to go.


End file.
